A/N: Thank you Nefas, for goading me. XD

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... timeless . ageless . changeless ...

... one

The Shinra patrol guard was bored.

Walk left, walk right, look around, walk left, walk right, look around, pick up some trash, walk left, walk right, look around, yawn, walk left, walk right, hi-five the poor soul coming to take his place in the last watch and get back to the barracks to faze out for tomorrow.

It was the same thing every night.

On a moment of impulse he leaned against the wall, looking up at the clouded Midgar skies, wondering what he was doing. As far as he was concerned, resistance to Shinra was virtually non-existence - seeing that they had just won the war over Wutai a couple of months ago. As a guard he never did understand the President's wanton need for absolutely security, albeit it was really none of his concern. He folded his arms around himself to try to keep warm. Midgar was a desert in some sense and desert nights were never too comfortable. A couple of seconds later he decided he had had enough of rest and stood. Briefly he scanned the terrain he was about to stalk in.

And they caught his eye.

There they stood.

Quiet.

Serene.

Nondescript.

The shorter one had a hood over his head, and a veil beneath that for added measure. He calmly assessed a hand-held apparatus of sorts, with wires sticking out at the edges, teeming with invisible activity. The taller one had a crop of raven hair - black as midnight, pouring gracefully over his shoulders, which he looked over for any signs of danger, lest anybody prove to be of harm to them both. The shorter one wore a cloak which stretched beyond the ground to ripple out from beneath him. The taller man had a cape of similar design, which swished about softly as he took wary notes of the surroudings.

Suddenly the man glanced into the guard's eye. Immediately, he was rendered immobile.

He saw eyes of amber-red brilliance. They bore through his soul. They pinned down his spirit.

But that was the last of the two strangers of the night he could remember, before he slumped into a peaceful slumber - destined to be found only by the one who would be taking over his duties on the next shift.

The man in the hood looked up and blinked through his veil.

"Oh wow," his voice was soft and hollow, despite the obvious effort to sound enthusiastic, "I didn't even notice him."

"You are going to get into trouble one day," the taller man unloaded the tranquilizer magazine from his gun and reloaded it with something more lethal.

His companion wisely chose to ignore that stab at his integrity and instead commented, "Well, what do you know. We're back where it all began."

The apparatus he held in his hand began to show signs of activity, the needle on it's board twitching to and fro excitedly.

"It's here." The dark-haired man stated.

"Sure seems so!" His companion agreed.

They approached the single most daunting building in the entire region, coming barely within the fringes of the light spilling out of the large entrance. Hassled by the light, the shorter person put a hand over his forehead and took a cursory glance upwards.

He sighed. "But I didn't think it would land here in THIS period of time..."

His companion made no reply.

"We'll just have to get the Energy Sphere back to finish this job isn't it?" The pale-haired one frowned slightly, focusing his attention on the logo pinned at the main entrance of the building. It was an interlinked letter constituting of 'S' and 'R'. Together, they represented nothing but bad tidings.

"That is correct," the more silent man spoke up this time, confirming their agenda for the night. "But," he then put a thoughtful hand on his chin, rubbing it gently, "this really isn't like Cloud at all... accepting a job like this..."

Cloud reared his head in his friend's direction and snarled, "Shut UP, Vincent! Do I have to remind you that you agreed to this too?"

Hiding the lower half of his face beneath his cloak, Vincent turned to look at Cloud, eyes twinkling with amusement. Cloud growled some more before directing his energy towards the materia pouch he had strapped to his hips. He dug around for something and, having found it, took it out and attached it to the armour he wore on his right hand.

"Anyway," he mumbled, adjusting the materia into the slot, "I'll head off first so you cover me from behind," he instructed briefly, when he was finally satisfied with the materia slots. He looked at Vincent, who looked back and nodded slightly. Offering his comrade a slight smile, he then channeled his power into activating the desired materia.

He did not have to wait long for the spell to levitate him off the ground.

Hovering in the air for a while, he took the time to get used to the floating sensation. Being a motion sickaphobe gave him more things to worry about in the air than on the land. Feeling confident enough after a while, though, he took an imaginary step in thin air and leapt upwards, where he would be able to have a birds eye view of the city of Midgar - and where he could properly use the Indicator to it's fullest limit to trace their target for this mission.

"Here I go!" He offered a curt goodbye to Vincent before taking off.

The solemn looking man gave a fleeting look upwards the gloomy skies, where his friend disappeared to. "Bon voyage," he barely managed to say before Cloud could no longer be seen.

After that, he found himself staring at the Midgar night sky.

"Still as depressing as ever," he commented dryly to nobody in particular, basking in the luxury of his own little angst-filled world. Still, he did not miss the sound of footsteps trudging heavily up the stairs from behind him. Engaged in their own animated conversation were a group of troopers and SOLDIERs, laughing merrily at a joke which had evaded his ears.

Without another thought he flitted out of sight, choosing to lean behind the wall just next to where he stood as he slowly masked himself with the thick of the night. The flurry of action attracted the attention of one particular homecoming warrior, as he turned his porcupine-like head in the direction Vincent had last zipped off into.

The vampire-like man endeared himself closer to the wall, his heart beating slightly faster when he heard the footsteps coming to a standstill right beside where he stood.

An awkward silence hung for a moment.

"What's wrong, Zax?" A distant voice called the SOLDIER to attention.

"Ah..." he mumbled, his eyes trained on the spot where Vincent was carefully trying to stay unnoticed. The question knocked his attention off for a split second, and Vincent grasped the chance to flee into the night.

Unseen and unheard.

"I thought I saw something..." Zax blinked, not able to feel the presence he thought he had felt, anymore. Shaking his head to clear it, he continued the trip back home, mumbling something about alcohol and the legal limits Shinra had stipulated.

It had been a long night, he decided.

And it would be a longer day still, come tomorrow.

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Midgar looked no different from the air than it did from the ground. From land the city looked like a bio-metallic nightmare. From above the city looked like a geographical experiment gone wrong. Not exactly wrong in description, but unfitting for a land once lush with greenery and abound with the lifeforce of the Planet.

Cloud only spent one moment more surveying the vast wastelands surrounding the majestic city before turning away to the matter at hand.

"It never did change, I suppose..." the boy lamented to himself, bringing the Indicator up to face level for closer examination. "Hm..." He noticed the Indicator needle jumping more and more furiously as he encircled the Shinra tower, levitating further and further into the atmosphere.

Finally he stopped just outside the library rooms, watching as the Indicator reached it's limit. He looked up briefly, seeing nothing but the library through its windows with its massive collection of books inside. The Indicator was still jumping at a ferocious speed, but it did not point to the exact destination, as it would have should the target be in clear sight.

"Strange," he pondered with fingers to his chin, "it should be around here..."

A small noise caught his attention, causing him to look up from the little machine at the scene before him.

As he tried to trace the source of the sound something snapped into place in his head.

He stared at the windows within his line of sight, and searched his memory banks for what they looked like just moments ago. *That room,* he came the a sterling conclusion as he stared at the window leftmost, *was still lighted just now!*

Moving slightly to face that particular window while he decided what his next step would be, another sound rang out.

"Ah..." Cloud blinked and looked at the Indicator, which was demanding his attention with a series of soft beeps. As he held the apparatus up, the lines travelling to and fro between the wires attached at the top of the thing began to ripple with newfound energy, stretching into a single straight line and beaming a luminous red streak of light into the room which just had its light switched off.

The blond-haired mercenary paused to gather his thoughts. *The Indicator's pointing there,* he told himself, trying to gear up for action. Narrowing his eyes slightly he let his hands fall to the sides of his body. *Better go check it out...* he finally decided, floating slowly towards the window in question.

As carefully as he could, the mercenary scaled the opened window and slid through it, peeping cautiously into the darkened room for any signs of danger. Seeing nothing immediate he hopped off from sitting on the window-sill and placed the hand with the Indicator on the sides of the pane, trying to quickly adjust to the darkness. "Pretty dark around here..." he muttered, almost in a whisper, to himself. Readying the Indicator to begin the final phase of his search, he widened his sensory fields. *If I don't find the target soon... !!*

A cold, hostile wind tingled at his neck from the left, causing his eyes to widen in automatic response. In a moment of pure reflex he brought his right hand up to defend whatever he could feel was coming in and the sound of metal scraping against metal echoed loudly throughout the library.

The next sound was that of the Indicator sliding across the smooth, metallic floor with much fanfare, coming to a forced stop in front of one of the bookshelves, sizzling to an operational standstill. Cloud's mind whirled and he forgot quickly that the assailant was still in the same room he was. In that instance the only thing on his mind was to get the Indicator back and check it to see if it was still working.

That, of course, changed when the flash of an icy, harsh looking blade pressed close to his form.

The blade was sharp, agleam with a strangely alien glow.

And it was dangerously near where Cloud's neck could be safely severed.

Cloud glanced left, briefly catching a pair of black boots with silver cuffs when his eyes swept past the floor.

*Oh. No.*

His eyes made the painfully slow roll upwards to fix themselves upon his attacker, whose green, feline eyes could not be mistaken for another's.

"Who are you?" Sephiroth tightened the grip on the masamune, demanding an answer.

"What are you doing here?"

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... end one ...
27/2/2003
[XD Fanfics!] /xd/

A/N pt. 2!:
This was originally a fic idea that had kind of been abandoned for months while it churned about and around. The reason was simple, really - I had wanted to explore the Cloud and Sephiroth relationship (no, NOT that way, down yaoi fans!), but could never find an appropriate setting. What would it be like if the older Cloud had met a younger Sephiroth? Is it possible for destined enemies to work alongside each other as friends? Questions like these eventually drove me to test the idea of the fic with a doujinshi ( available here!: /xd/art/ ). And with the encouragement (encouragement???) of my fellow brain-stormer, I finally tossed it out into the open.

I'm sorry if that sounded contrived. XD Hope you enjoyed it, at the very least!